John Robertson has laid bare the heartbreaking circumstances which led to his leave of absence from Caley Thistle earlier this year.
Robertson was granted compassionate leave at the end of February, after losing his sister due to cancer.
There was also the added concerns about travelling around the country during a time when Covid-19 was still rife, with the risk of bringing it home to family members.
The 56-year-old came back to the club in May, being appointed in a new role as sporting director.
With the illness suffered by assistant manager Scott Kellacher – he remains on long-term leave – Robertson took on a greater deal of responsibility, but it came to the point where he says he had to take a step back.
Speaking to fan podcast The Wyness Shuffle, Robertson said: “I was really concerned we were bringing something back to our families, back to our region. Our region got off lucky in terms of there weren’t many deaths – a heartfelt sorry for those who did die in the region, it’s horrendous.
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“Here we were driving round the country; a couple of the players’ wives were pregnant, the younger lads have grandads, grannies, aunties and uncles and they were dropping off things for them.
“We had that run were there was no games. We lost (the game with) Raith Rovers because they had 25 out of 26 players out with Covid. Arbroath was postponed due to a frozen pitch, Morton was off because it was wet.
“Then they tried to rush the Scottish Cup through, which killed us for four matches when we couldn’t play it. Eventually that was cancelled and done later.
“At the time, down the road, I had four siblings who all had cancer issues. Tragically we lost one. That was bad enough. We had to look after the rest of them and make sure they were OK, as they hadn’t been getting checked.
“Both of my sons had granddaughters, one of them had got married. I hadn’t seen anybody and couldn’t do anything with them.
“It just got too much. I took on far too much; that’s a fault of my own and I should have delegated a bit more. I didn’t want anything bad to happen with anyone else that I took the eye off the ball with myself.
“It got to the stage where I wasn’t being me. I was getting irritable, I was snappy – I was doing it to make sure everyone was OK.
“I spoke to my sister on the Tuesday. She was taken in on the Wednesday for a general scan and they found the cancer she had spread to the rest of her body. By 12 o’clock on the Thursday, she had died.
“I had to realise that I had to take a step back, a step away from football. There are more important things in life. You don’t always think like that in football. You don’t always think like that as a fan and I certainly didn’t think that way as a manager.
“It was evident I had to do something. I had a chat with Scot (Gardiner) on the way back from Ayr United and we came up with a plan.
“We spoke about a name and thankfully we got Neil. He was terrific. His concern for me was tremendous and he did it as a favour, to help me get the time I needed to recover.”
Prior to his period of absence, Robertson had spoken at length about the impact the pandemic had on him personally.
It led to the Caley Jags bringing in Neil McCann as interim manager and Billy Dodds as an assistant coach. Dodds was named as Robertson’s successor at the start of June.
The Hearts legend also detailed the complete break he had from the game during the three months he was away.
“I can’t speak enough of Neil McCann and Billy Dodds on the job they did under hugely trying circumstances,” added Robertson.
“We had lost Scott Kellacher at Christmas, through a long-term illness he’d had previously, then he caught long Covid. I probably took too much on myself.
“It was quite brutal. I had an hour to tell all my family and friends down the road that I’d be coming off my phone for eight weeks. I wasn’t allowed to watch football on TV, I wasn’t allowed to watch training. There was no football whatsoever, it was a complete reset button while we looked into all the aspects of why I wasn’t feeling so well.
“That was tough going but it was needed. It had got to the stage where I was sleeping maybe only an hour or two a night for three months prior to that.
“Without going too deep into it, we got the sleeping patterns right. We got to a stage where we had to look at this season; we’d spoke about this position and the club – Scot, Ross Morrison – the chairman – and the board have been tremendous while I’ve been going through these troubles.
“We couldn’t put a definitive date on when I could come back to football as manager. I thought it would be hugely unfair on the club to have to wait and see if everything was going to be alright for pre-season.
“Scot and the board came back with the option of this. For the benefit of the club, the players, the team, this was a way forward that would help everybody.”